Nick Berg
I had a sleepless night last night. By now, the whole world has no doubt read about the horrific slaying of Nick Berg in Iraq. The reason for my inability to sleep was that I searched out the video on the internet and watched it. The horror of what I had seen kept replaying in my mind as I tried to sleep. It affected me far more deeply than I was prepared for.
What the news reports fail to capture is just how medieval the whole scene was. While his killer finished him off, the others stood by chanting “Allahu Akbar”. The closest thing I could compare it to would be the baying of the hounds on a fox-hunt. Every so often they would stop, as if transfixed and shocked, themselves, by their own actions. Then they would start baying again.
Most of the blogs I have read today are incandescent with rage. This murder smacks of honour killings, and the beheadings and arbitrary killings during Hussein’s regime. I think, however, that the killers have miscalculated the impact of what they have done. I don’t believe that this was revenge for the Abu Ghreib humiliations, but if, as claimed, it was carried about by Al Qaeda, it was politically motivated. The impact, however, will not be the withdrawl of the Americans. Rather, this will steel the administration with resolve. In one fell swoop, the news has shifted from Abu Ghreib back to the barbarism of the Iraqi insurgents. In the process, they have given Bush a much greater chance for re-election, and dramatically demonstrated to the world how unready Iraq is for self-government.
